News Updates

Despite criticism of his role in handling a new contract for
Boston's teachers, Acting Mayor Thomas Menino emerged as the leader
from a field of eight candidates in the city's nonpartisan preliminary
election last week.

Mr. Menino and James Brett, a longtime state representative, will
now face each other in the Nov. 2 general election.

Education and governance issues figured prominently in the race. Mr.
Menino favors keeping an appointed school committee, while Mr. Brett
has called for returning to an elected body.

The Boston Teachers Union has filed a lawsuit challenging an
appointment that Mr. Menino made to the school committee, which later
rejected a tentative agreement reached with the union. (See Education
Week, Sept. 22, 1993.)

Mr. Menino has argued that the agreement was too expensive.

A group of private school accrediting associations that has been
working to establish a national recognition mechanism has elected
officers and settled on a name--the National Council for Private School
Accreditation.

In a meeting this month, Gilbert L. Plubell, the director of the
North American office of K-12 education for the Seventh-day Adventist
Church, was elected the president and chairman of the new
organization.

Charles J. O'Malley, the former head of the U.S. Education
Department's private-education office, has been named the executive
director of the council.

The new organization includes representatives of 10 religious and
regional private school associations that provide accreditation, as
well as three members not connected with such associations.

The latest "outsider'' to sign on is John Stoops, an official of the
Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools. (See Education Week,
April 7, 1993.)

The council expects to begin accepting applications in the spring
from accreditation programs seeking recognition and approval, Mr.
O'Malley said.

The Amherst, Mass., school system has agreed to reconsider
ability-grouping practices that local civil-rights activists challenged
in court.

The Amherst-Pelham Regional School Committee and the local branch of
the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
announced last week that they had agreed to set up a 14-member
committee to examine how the district groups students for
instruction.

The agreement is intended to resolve a suit, filed last year by the
Amherst branch of the N.A.A.C.P., that alleged the district was
violating the civil rights of minority children by placing
disproportionately high numbers of them in classes for lower-ability
students.

The agreement calls for the panel to address the impact of the
grouping system on minority students and consider alternatives. It also
mandates discussions about the district's disciplinary practices and
their effects on minority students. (See Education Week, Jan. 13,
1993.)

Education Alternatives Inc., a firm that seeks to manage public
schools, last week announced that it had shown a year-end profit for
the first time.

The Minneapolis-based company reported profits of $1.1 million on
revenues of $30.1 million for the fiscal year ending in June.

The company had failed to turn a profit in its previous six years of
operation, posting losses of $1.6 million on $2.9 million in revenues
for the 1992 fiscal year.

A five-year, $133 million contract to manage nine Baltimore schools,
signed last year, is generally credited for the company's recent
profitability. That contract--and speculation about upcoming
deals--have helped boost the company's stock above $35 per share, up
from an original selling price of $4 in 1991.

Company officials have predicted that E.A.I.'s profit on each
contract would be thin, but its overall profitability would increase as
it takes on more business. (See Education Week, Oct. 14, 1992.)

A federal appeals court has overturned a ruling that the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology violated federal antitrust laws
by sharing financial-aid information with the eight Ivy League
institutions.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reversed a
district-court finding that the so-called "Overlap Group'' violated the
Sherman Antitrust Act by meeting each spring to set standard
financial-aid packages for students admitted to more than one
participating institution. (See Education Week, Sept. 9, 1992.)

The appeals court returned the case to the lower court for further
proceedings, saying that the district court had not taken into
consideration "the procompetitive and social-welfare justifications
proffered by M.I.T.''

The eight Ivy League schools--Brown University, Columbia University,
Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Princeton
University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Yale
University--decided to stop meeting in order to settle the matter.
M.I.T. was the only institution to fight the charges, which the Justice
Department initiated in 1991.

In a written statement, M.I.T.'s president, Charles M. Vest, called
the appellate ruling "a significant step toward the equal opportunity
for all students to attend the college of their choice.''

The Overlap Group was founded in 1958 to insure that financially
needy applicants admitted to more than one of the nine schools received
comparable aid offers, so that students would select a school on the
basis of its offerings rather than its cost. M.I.T. had asserted that
the existence of the group thus served to increase, rather than limit,
consumer choice.

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